Photography by theonlydeadheadinthehameau

Almost exactly 74 years ago today, on 10th June 1944, a company of SS troops massacred 642 residents – mostly women and children – of the village of Oradour-sur-Glane, in the Haute-Vienne département of south-west France.

Since then, the site has been maintained as a memorial and museum, left to age unaltered, the buildings weathering and walls collapsing.

As this will be the last instalment of Thursday Doors in 2017, with Norm taking a well-earned festive break until 11 January, it seemed like an appropriate time to review some of my personal favourites that have been posted here over the last twelve months.

With the exception of my ‘official’ Door of the Year these are in no particular order of preference and are just placed chronologically. A full ranking of the 300 or so doors that I’ve put up here in 2017 wouldn’t be possible but would be pointless.

This first one – a striking and well-cared for door in the town of Saint Junien – appeared last February. You could hardly miss that mustard-yellow paint.

By way of contrast, in March I started posting doors from the town of Confolens. This was one of the first I came across on my initial excursion and it’s hardly been bettered.

Both Confolens and Saint Junien are about a 30 minute drive from here at Tranquility Base, but this third door, from June, is much closer – a mere ten minutes away in the village of Saint-Martial-sur-Isop. It’s irresistibly bijou

It’s not just France that has interesting doors. This elaborate example, originally posted in July, can be found in Rodney Street, Liverpool:

In September I made another visit to the national monument of Oradour-sur-Glane, where this door can be found in the church:

However, this is my personal choice for Door of the Year 2017. Posted in October it’s to be found in the medieval village of Saint Cirq Lapopie and I’ve never seen anything like it as an example of making the door fit the hole:

The village of Oradour-sur-Glane is a national monument in France. In June 1944 a battalion of the German SS massacred over 600 men, women and children here. It has been left just as it was in the aftermath of that atrocity for over seventy years.

Walls have collapsed, wooden furniture has long rotted away, but metal objects are more resilient and still survive, despite being exposed to the elements for over half a century.

This open book, suspended in mid-air, was part of an artistic installation in the Visitor Centre at the Oradour-sur-Glane memorial. If books survive, and they can still be opened, then perhaps there is some hope in that.